Simon Callow is as noisy on the page as he is on the stage, not necessarily a bad thing. Reading through this skilfully arranged collection of his journalism, speeches and tributes – linked with autobiographical notes – I felt a sense of being engulfed by a tidal wave.

Like Orsino in Twelfth Night, Callow is in love with love, his appetite as all-consuming as the sea. Simon Gray doesn't just write good plays; he writes masterpieces. Paul Scofield isn't just a remarkable actor with an inner secret; he guards his God-given talent like a tiger and provides an enduring example of visionary power to rival "any great artist in any sphere".

Even when you agree with Callow, there's an air of special pleading and hyperbole that is sometimes offputting. But he's so persuasive, and so enthusiastic, you overcome these caveats and submit to the impassioned fury of his arguments and descriptions.

His detailed and perceptive portraits of figures as various and extraordinary as Charlie Chaplin, Charles Laughton, Peter Brook, Rudolf Nureyev, Peter Ustinov, Tommy Cooper and John Gielgud are utterly irresistible.

And when it comes to people he admires, whom he's befriended through working with them – Alan Bennett, Peter Shaffer, David Hare, Michael Gambon – you realise he also possesses something his hero Kenneth Tynan had in the post-war era: a gift for transforming personal experience into blazingly intelligent, objective, critical appreciation.

"If acting is not about prizes, and not about glory, what then is it about?" he asks, pondering the majesty of Laurence Olivier. Callow's whole career, in fact, is a heroic act of will, whose purpose is as much about completing his marvellous biography of Orson Welles (two volumes down, one to go) as it is about playing Mozart, Dickens and, currently, Shakespeare on tour.

The breadth of his experience, from fringe to Hollywood, Gay Sweatshop to Merchant Ivory, is remarkable. His appreciation of the anti-Stanislavskian theories of Michael Chekhov, Anton's nephew, in the context of his brilliant analysis of naturalism in acting, and his scornful rejection of the "luvvie" label, are alone worth the price of this essential, agreeably exhausting tome.